Burning to Cool Down & other Tales of the Troubled Soul

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There is no worse pain than being thirsty – truly, abysmally thirsty. But then there is almost nothing better than a drink of water when you're godlessly dry. And therein lies the horrible dichotomy – happiness and pleasure are only really attainable through suffering. A life too soft is without enjoyment – is the road to madness. Even the strongest wills turn to rust when conditions are too easy.

Welcome to the horrors of the human heart - no admission charge, but you'll have to check your coat.

I have this friend, and he's got a cousin, and his cousin comes from big money. Not needing to get up in the morning and do anything calibre big money. He doesn't work. He never needs to work. When he's bored, he picks up and travels to wherever he feels like. When he's feeling prolific, he hires a film crew to follow him around, to capture it for posterity.

He's on prescription anti-depressants, of course. Makes you feel just a little bit better about going to work everyday, doesn't it? There are worse places than salt mines.

I've never seen statistics on this so it could be wrong, but there's a commonly held hot potato of wisdom that gets thrown around a lot – that many people die within a year of retiring. I hate bringing this up when it's unsubstantiated but I'm going to do it anyway and trust you to treat it as suspect evidence. I've known men on retirement's cobwebbed doorstep who lost sleep over this. No one knows why it's the case; it just seems to be that the newly work-free quietly die, cut adrift from the wage-labouring mainland. Just when they reach the harbour that they so eagerly sought.

The culmination of a lifetime's work is death. Smile when you say it, it helps.

On the other side of our fast spinning coin, though, I also know a lot of people who dream of retirement. In fact, I don't think I know anyone who hasn't salivated at the idea of early retirement and a life of ease. But if you accept the common wisdom, then you realize that that which we so eagerly seek and covet will probably kill us if we get it. We lead a charmed life.

The culmination of a lifetime's work is death. Smile when you say it, it helps.

So here's the worrisome grain of sand that I cannot confirm the existence of, but which I deeply suspect is somewhere out there in the sifting desert. We must suffer. Regularly. Otherwise, we fall apart, break down, collapse. Like fish that live happily at great depths under the crushing pressure of the sea, but explode when brought up to less stressful depths, we are not built for ease and luxury. A little bit is good, but too much… too much and we come apart in all sorts of dismaying ways.

Speaking as one particularly accursed, this is a consideration that governs my life like a zodiacal sign. When I feel tired and lazy and want nothing more than to spend the day lying on the couch, I am filled with the awful knowledge that my lethargy will burn on my head like a crown of thorns. That I won't actually be able to enjoy myself at all – probably won't be able to sleep that night - unless I first go out and seek suffering. For me, downtime is only truly enjoyable when it follows something difficult – I'm only really at peace when I'm just recovering.

Now maybe not everyone is as particularly sensitive to this phenomenon as I am, but I think that we all suffer from it to one degree or another. I also suspect that the cathode-ray Prozac of television might enjoy such widespread use because it treats the symptom of this particular disease, but that's another matter entirely. The fact of the matter is that we must go outside into the storm and make our way, routinely, no matter how badly we don't want to. Because if we don't go out to the storm, the storm will eventually come in for us anyway, and who wants that in their house?

So. Might as well throw your winter jacket on and go outside. That warm fire will feel better when you're cold anyway.